Protect your devices!

We’re VERY aggressive around here at LXF Towers. Mexican art editor Effy runs a twice-weekly Fight Club in the sub-basement car park (this is an actual thing), while Jonni has been known to ring his bike’s bell at tardy headphone-using pedestrians on the Avon River cycle path. That’ll show ‘em. Meanwhile your erstwhile editor here is often found sticking passiveaggressive notes on monitors about people not refilling the coffee pot. Oh the humanity! You get the picture. As with most things involving open source and Linux, there’s a multitude of ways to solve a problem and a multitude of problems to solve. As we often do, we’re approaching protection with a broad brush stroke. This comes in three solid defences: firewalling your network, learning to audit and lock down your servers, and bolstering your terrible password protection.

Hopefully the password advice isn’t new, but we can help you improve protection with Yubikey two-factor authentication and open source password managers. Throwing up a firewall – we’re using Ipfire, which is on the DVD – is a double-edged sword, but it’s interesting if nothing else, as it’ll show you the amount of traffic directed at your network. We also look at basic server protection and how to audit a Nextcloud deployment, which is a great learning tool.

I also can’t ignore that Linux Format is now 20 years old. We’ve dragged, kicking and screaming (it’s amazing what the promise of free beer can do) all the editors of old together again, to reminisce on how LXF came to be, how much the open source and Linux worlds have changed since the year 2000, and where all of this is going. But forget about those lovely chaps, none of this would have happened without you, dear reader, so the biggest thanks goes to you. Enjoy!